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Groucho Marx

A Literal Look at the Surreal; The Marx Brothers Meet Salvador Dali

This is an 11 X 17 India Ink piece I did based on a film script Salvador Dali wrote for the Marx Brothers. It’s quite a story. Long story short, Salvador Dali spent a lot of time writing scripts that were too wacky to be made and he loved him some Harpo Marx.

The two had a bit of a bromance in the 1930’s that…I’ll just let Salvador describe the time he visited Harpo in Cali. The legendary Surrealist said he found Harpo:

“naked, crowned with roses, and in the centre of a veritable forest of harps… He was caressing, like a new Leda, a dazzling white swan, and feeding it a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese…”

Um…K.

Anyway, he wrote an insane script that included the Marx Brothers. How insane?

Let’s just say that “A horde of burning giraffes wearing gas masks, cyclists balancing loaves on their heads and Harpo catching dwarves with a butterfly net? That’s just not funny,” is something Groucho Marx could have conceivably said.

This likeness of Chico, Harpo and Groucho along with Dali’s fictional “Surrealist Woman” from the pages of the script is a showstopper. It’s impossible for someone to walk into a room and not marvel and ask about it.

And then you get to look smart because you drop some esoteric Dali knowledge, still the most impressive type of esoteric knowledge at cocktail parties.